Lying beneath the tranquil settings of Yellowstone National Park in the US lies an enormous magma chamber. It’s responsible for the geysers and hot springs that define the area, but for scientists at Nasa, it’s also one of the greatest natural threats to human civilization as we know it: a potential supervolcano.
According to NASA, supervolcanoes are significantly more harmful than asteroids as natural hazards to human civilization. A NASA scientist recently revealed something alarming about the Yellowstone supervolcano, as well as NASA’s intentions for it. What exactly is this startling revelation, and how does it affect everyone around the world, particularly those in the United States? In today’s video, we’ll go through this disturbing revelation in great depth.
Supervolcanoes are like the supervillains of the geologic world, as stories of their looming threat grow ever more exaggerated. Massive eruptions do pose serious threats, yet there are many misconceptions about them. The United States Geological Survey classifies a volcano as « super » if it has produced at least one explosion that expelled more than 240 cubic miles of material—a little more than twice the volume of Lake Erie.
This gives it a magnitude of eight, the highest ranking on the Volcanic Explosivity Index, or VEI, which is used to assess an eruption’s explosiveness. These are massive eruptions with far-reaching consequences, ranging from avalanches of hot rock and gases racing down the volcano’s flanks to worldwide climatic impacts.
However, there is a crucial caveat about supervolcanoes that most people overlook: just because a volcano has had a super-eruption once or twice in the past doesn’t indicate its future eruptions will be just as large.
